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They say a man’s home is his castle but in days of olde was possibly not the most important building in many a man’s life. Now this may be a particularly British thing but there was indeed another building where great things happened. So much so that it has been documented, albeit reflected upon in a kindly manner, in a few more humourous books.
Yet there is a great history within the United Kingdom of people pottering in the wooden shack at the end of the garden and creating considerably wonderful things. In some cases one might even suggest it could constitute a cottage industry were the buildings just a little more substantial. Yet a shed in its simplest form provides a cheap workspace and privacy to experiment, and whilst many are used to store garden implements and machinery and support small-scale tinkering for small DIY jobs, some sheds have given us incredible inventions.
The hovercraft was initially developed by Sir Christopher Cockerell, and there is still a passenger service from Portsmouth to the Isle of Wight. Sadly the days of cross-channel services are long gone! The bagless vacuum cleaner was developed in a shed by Sir James Dyson, the same shed where the ballbarrow (a wheelbarrow with a ball instead of a wheel) was invented. Sir Clive Sinclair started developing small electronic products from his shed, before helping pioneer the home computing revolution with the ZX80, ZX81 and ZX Spectrum computers. Even the likes of JCB, Lotus and Caterham cars, Marshall Amplifiers, Ariel Motorcycles, Raspberry Pi and Brompton folding bicycle have their origins in workshops and backrooms (not quite sheds in every case but close enough!).
This is not even a uniquely British phenomenon but choice of room or building may vary. The USA prefer to work in their garages it seems, spawning many of our modern large corporations such as Harley Davidson (1903), Disney (1923) Hewlett Packard (1939), Mattel (1945), Apple (1976), Dell (1984), Amazon (1994), Google (1998), and GoPro (2002).
In all of the examples the shed provides a basic combination of a cheap workspace, privacy to experiment, rudimental tools and the freedom from (corporate) constraints. And this is very much the point – as AI provides a way for people to either start a new technology-based hobby or accelerate an existing pursuit.
Personally, I have done both. I have a Linux-based media server which had a sub-optimal configuration thanks to my amateur tinkering. AI has enabled me to streamline and update that configuration, and in the process resolving several workarounds or issues I just lived with. It even allowed me to enhance my setup by introducing containerization of some software. All very geeky stuff but it keeps me amused.
And then I branched out into small projects. Firstly, to re-sort my media files as a sort of data-cleanse. I then focused on my audio files by creating a simple, locally hosted website that allows me to do basic DJing, albeit badly, from my personal collection. In parallel I opted to create a simple player which is more like a radio station, tuning the playlist by gathering a simple preference to each song it plays. Next, and I know I am not alone in this, I figured a virtual train set might be an interesting, and less space-consuming, project. But the 17.35 from Woking has been delayed by a fun hardware failure throwing a spanner in the works!
The point of all this? AI gives us an incredible opportunity to tinker and fix, and to experiment and play. And I think away from the corporate spotlight people have a chance to learn and do genuinely interesting private projects. And out of all that, they will either be learning useful skills to bring into the corporate world, or they might just invent something which spawns a whole new corporation, or even an industry!
So find your space! Indulge your passions! And PLAY!